


two or three syllables like water in your mouth

by Dialux



Series: i promise not to follow it [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: ...relatively, Banter, Booker Knows Botany And Hates It, Brother-Brother Relationships, Dreams and Nightmares, Everyone Thinks Everyone Else Is An Idiot, Gen, Happy Ending, Insomnia, Post-Canon, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms Slowly Becoming Healthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26077639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: “I cannot believe I’m going to have to get a degree in fucking therapy because of you,” hisses Nile.“I thank you for your sacrifice,” says Booker, and pats her on the shoulder gingerly.[Booker dreams for the first time in two hundred years. It... isn't going well.]
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf & Nicky | Nicolò, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman
Series: i promise not to follow it [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893748
Comments: 48
Kudos: 490





	two or three syllables like water in your mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Mary Oliver. Written for [this ask on tumblr.](https://dialux.tumblr.com/post/627298613504131072/oh-man-i-just-finished-your-booker-fic-and-its)
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

He startles awake, heart racing.

The details of the dream is already fading, but the after-effects are a fucking bitch and a half to manage: Booker’s wide awake, and jumpy enough to probably break the neck of the _idiot_ that’s sneaking up behind him-

“It’s just me.”

“No just about it,” grumbles Booker, but his voice is thankfully low enough that the other three don’t wake. “Why’re you awake?”

“I don’t sleep well,” says Andy carelessly.

Booker swipes a hand over his eyes and gets up. Stumbles to the kitchen. He feels like such shit, and it’s almost beyond him not to dial into the shipping company and just… re-direct some of the downers to the shores of sunny Lima. Blitz out his locus coeruleus with enough norepinephrine that even his swift healing takes about four hours to fix it. Add another two hours of passing in and out of non-REM and Booker can claim to a proper six hours of sleep: it’s enough to survive. With the alcohol numbing him further, he can stretch that sleep out to eight hours on the really, really bad nights.

Absent the drugs, though, he needs other things to focus on. Their bodies can function on less sleep- the same way they can survive on less food- and Booker’s been experimenting with that for the past couple weeks.

It is not, as Joe’s told him multiple times, going well.

“Doesn’t mean you have to be the same.”

Booker pours out the coffee, mixes it with concentrate of yaupon holly, and then adds a shit-ton of sugar to the brew. Andy watches him with dark eyes, but he doesn’t offer it to her; the last thing they all need is a jumped-up six thousand year old warrior high on the strongest caffeine that Booker can, legally, get his hands on.

“What was the dream about?”

“Fuck if I know,” says Booker, and hisses out through his teeth as he drains half the cup. _Christ_ but it tastes terrible, too bitter and too sweet in equal measure. Still, the trembling ache in his shoulders, tight about his ears, softens. “You know how it is. It’s not like I’ve got a paucity of nightmares. None of us do.”

“You’re the one waking up in the middle of the night.”

“And you’re the one not sleeping.”

“I’m used to it, though,” says Andy. 

Booker rolls his eyes. “Dream diaries don’t work. Talking about them doesn’t help. I have tried to literally _rewire my brain_ and it isn’t happening. Turns out that being depressed and missing your family when you die makes it impossible for you to feel anything else.”

Andy rolls _her_ eyes. “Just because you automatically accept the most depressing possible theory doesn’t mean that it’s the correct one, Book.”

“If I could go back in time,” Booker tells her, “I would seduce Nile’s mother and ensure that she remained heartbroken over the handsome French baker who disappeared into the clouds and therefore could not marry Nile’s father.”

“I assume there’s a point to that,” says Andy dryly.

“I liked you a hell of a lot better when you weren’t this fucking optimistic is the point,” says Booker. “And I know that it’s all Nile’s _fucking_ influence. So.”

“So,” says Nile, grinning at him from the bedroom she’s just walked out of, “if I don’t exist, you’d be happier?”

“Your mother doesn’t know what she missed out on,” says Booker, and drains the rest of the brew.

…

_A bridge of gold and laughter. A bridge as silver as his wife’s grey hair. A bridge, shining as a gun in broad daylight-_

Booker wakes, gasping.

Coffee. Holly. Bitterness down his gullet. 

It’s not really new any longer, is it?

…

He takes a knife to the gut, and then sees another soldier sneaking up behind Andy. There’s no time; he’s still barely standing, much less able to voice a proper warning. Instead, Booker lets the intestines he’s clutching inside spill out in a dark, bloody slither. Stumbles. The soldier slips on the sudden viscera: Booker’s yanking his guts back into his own body, mouth open in a silent scream because it really, _really_ hurts.

He wakes up, gasping.

…

He drowns, and drowns, and drowns.

He wakes up, gasping.

...

“Right,” says Nile. “You need help, Booker.”

“Fuck off,” says Booker. 

He’s on mile twenty-one of a marathon-esque circuit, and his body’s pretty much hitting the wall; he does not want to talk about his issues right now. Joe and Nicky have gotten tired enough of his grumpiness to escape to the city for the day, and Andy’s off on one of her personal missions that nobody knows any details about.

Booker hasn’t slept in about forty-one hours, and it’s not getting better.

It’s why he left the house and went on this run! It’s why he’s trying to drive his body into- well, not an _early_ grave, but a grave nevertheless!

Booker regrets many things in life. Introducing Copley to Nile ranks high among them, especially after the little shit went and learned how to hack phones from a fucking CIA agent.

“I’m telling you this because you aren’t going to listen to anyone else,” says Nile. “And this seemed like a good time to make sure you listened. Look, Booker, there are things out there- therapists- courses, if you aren’t going to talk to anyone. You really, _really-”_

Booker rips out his headphones, takes the little molten sun that feels rather like something has ruptured in his chest, and pushes the energy into his legs. 

He sprints the rest of the way home. 

He’s pretty sure he’s ripped one of the muscles in his thighs with it, and the agony of that is enough for him to focus on something else apart from Nile. Who does not look impressed.

“You need help,” she says quietly, when he finally stops clutching at his own thigh and drops back into the mud and mulch of the garden.

Booker laughs. He laughs, and keeps on laughing, and only manages to stop by rolling over and suffocating himself in the roots of a fucking- plant. 

Probably a _Cycus aculeata,_ which means that either Booker’s in the wrong hemisphere or Andy’s been introducing invasive species again because she misses her fucking girlfriend too much.

“Yeah,” he says, and sits up, already planning the lecture and the following plant-removal that he’ll have to do. Then he sees Nile’s face, and Booker pauses, reviewing what he’s just agreed to. “No,” he says. “I mean. Yes, I need help. That’s, like, the fucking- understatement of the century. Past two centuries. But. I’m not getting help from anyone else.”

Nile folds her arms over her chest. With the sun streaming right behind her, she looks like a goddess come to life: haloed, beautiful, the slightest bit unreal.

“That’s fine,” she says. “I’ll just ask Joe to become a therapist.”

“Sure,” snorts Booker. “And I’ll ask Andy to become a pacifist.”

Nile points a finger at him. “Don’t be mean.”

“Ask Nicky,” Booker advises her. “I mean, I don’t think you’ll get anywhere, but. You’re less likely to be laughed out of the room.” At her questioning look, he elaborates: “Idiot was a priest, back in the day. And, you know, all those people- well, priests were as close as you’d get to therapists before all of this psychology stuff came about.”

“Right,” says Nile warily. “So why do you think I’ll be laughed at? Nicky sounds like he’s good for the job.”

Booker stares at her. “What did the man do, the second he had a chance to leave?”

“Er. Leave?”

“He went on a fucking _Crusade,”_ says Booker. “He killed people. He- well, you know, did the whole invader thing. Liked it, too. He only really stopped because he decided he liked Joe more, and Joe was, like, _I’m not going to let you kill my people for fun anymore,_ and they worked out their excess energy by fucking in sand, because both of them are absolute idiots.”

Nile blinks at him. “So. Not a therapist.”

Booker grins at her, and knows it’s more of a baring of his teeth than anything comforting. “I guess your best bet is Andy, then.”

“I cannot believe I’m going to have to get a degree in fucking therapy because of you,” hisses Nile.

“I thank you for your sacrifice,” says Booker, and pats her on the shoulder gingerly.

He gets an armful of a furiously emotional Nile a moment later, hugging him so tight around the neck it feels like a throttling. Then she backs away, and goes into the house, leaving Booker in leaves and mulch and a burgeoning headache.

Fucking _invasive species,_ he thinks, and wishes he’d never studied botany. Really. If he was just like Nicky and purposely uneducated in all the ecological implications, he could ignore it. But Booker had to go and study plants and try to synthesize his own compounds and get tangled up in ecology legislation in the 1980s, and so he _knows,_ goddammit, and he’ll have to face Andy’s hangdog expression tonight when he serves up roasted cycad beside whatever Joe’s preparing for dinner.

_Fuck my life,_ he thinks, but it isn’t half so sour as it might have been just a month earlier. _Fuck my life,_ he thinks, and heads back into the house, whistling the whole goddamn way.

**Author's Note:**

> \- The locus coeruleus produces norepinephrine in our bodies  
> \- Norepinephrine is one of three hormones that our bodies stop producing during REM-sleep. Now, please note that this does not mean that production of NE will stop REM-sleep, but that's the... assumption that I'm working under here.  
> \- Yaupon holly is one of the few other naturally occurring sources of caffeine in the plant world. It tastes like absolute _shit,_ ngl, 0/10 would recommend  
> \- If you're frozen in the state at which you die for the rest of your existence, does that mean that you're left with the particular brain-state that you were in when you died? I.e. if Nile dies thinking and sure that she's doing the right thing, then does she spend the rest of her life fighting/working towards doing the right thing? Does _Booker,_ who died missing his family, does that mean that he'll never be able to escape that particular brain-state?  
> \- It's a depressing theory for sure! Which is why Andy tells him so.  
> \- Most people tend to hit the wall around mile twenty of a marathon. If you're like me and wimpy, it's mile seventeen. If you're like Booker and immortal, I'm pushing it to mile twenty-one.  
> \- _Cycus aculeata_ is endemic to Vietnam, and should not be seen in Peru.


End file.
